Barry’s Back Manilow, Whose Career Has Spanned 29 Years And 25 Albums, Will Offer An Interactive Feel When He Plays The Arena On Friday

Barry Manilow. Doesn’t the name just bring back the ‘70s? Maybe for some, but the guy is still on top for others.

Whether or not you’re in tune with the man’s style, you have to admit Barry Manilow is a song-writing demigod and a font of creative output. You know his songs. Hey, you know all of the words to some of his songs. You have to - they have been top sellers for years.

Tell me you don’t know “Mandy,” “Looks Like We Made It” or “Copacabana.” Manilow has written the songs that you will sing along with when they come on the radio. “I Write the Songs” could be his autobiography.

Friday is your chance to hear Barry, the human jukebox, sing from his entire collection - 29 albums spanning 25 years - in a show to be determined by the audience. The concert will include everything from his first hits up to his latest album, “Summer of ‘78,” as picked by people in the Arena. I asked Manilow over the phone last week how his interactive show works.

Barry Manilow: “On stage I’ve got a screen which flashes up all of my albums. I’ve got 29 albums. They go around like a wheel, like a wheel of fortune. It just flies - they go flipping by very fast. At random my stage manager goes roaming through the house, and he picks a person in the audience. I talk to them for a couple of minutes, and then I spin the wheel real fast and then they stop the wheel. Whatever album it stops on, we do a few songs from. So every show is different, because the band and I never know what album is going to come up.”

William Berry: “So you’ve got seconds between the time a song is picked and when you have to start singing it?”

B.M.: “We know what songs we’re going to sing, so that’s easy. And we’ve done the show for about two months now and it’s very tight. But it’s a lot of fun, because we never know which ones are going to come up. If the person I’m talking to in the audience is really good at it, they could pick one that they want if they stop it at the right time, but most of the time it’s really just at random.”

W.B.: “I bet that keeps you on your toes.”

B.M.: “Yeah, it does.”

W.B.: “So, whose idea was this?”

B.M.: “Well, it was mine. I came up with it because I did this A&E special at the end of last year which was a two-hour live show. For two hours I just took requests from the United States - I guess some of it was from Europe. People called in and they would just request songs. And that was REALLY on my toes. All the songs had to be from my catalog, but we really didn’t know which songs were going to come up. But I couldn’t figure out how to do that live. It was such a fun two hours. I loved it. My band and I know just about all of the songs from all of the albums, so they didn’t stump us at all. I figured that would be an entertaining way to do a show.”

W.B.: “What is the strangest or hardest back-to-back combination which has been requested?”

B.M.: “I’ve kind of rigged it so that we don’t get too many ballads in a row. The first couple of weeks a lot of albums with fantastic ballads came up, and I thought it was overkill - it was attack of the ballads. We’ve got so many different styles in there, so we’ve kind of rigged the computer so that one of 10 albums come up - you know, one is ballad-heavy, and another is up-tempo heavy.”

W.B.: “‘The ‘Greatest Hits’ tour lasted four years. How long will this tour last?”

B.M.: “I’m not gonna tour for four years. January is the end of this tour.”

W.B.: “How much time are you spending on the road?”

B.M.: “More than I want to. But this year it’s less than I ever have, so I guess it’s going down, down, down. This year it’ll be - out of the whole year - about five months. The last two months I’ve been down in La Jolla (Calif.) helping them out with this musical I’ve written, called ‘Harmony.’ So that’s kind of being on the road, too. That’s a lot of hotel rooms and room service.”

W.B.: “How is that show going?”

B.M.: “Fantastic. It’s a very beautiful experience. Everybody told me to watch out, ‘Mounting a Broadway musical is very intense and you’ll get ulcers,’ but that’s not what I’ve found at all. This is a very happy experience.”

W.B.: “What else is on the slate for this winter?”

B.M.: “Well, I’m trying to cool down. This has been a pretty intense couple of years writing the show (‘Harmony’) and doing the ‘Summer of 78’ album, and then putting the tour together. So I have made a vow to myself that I’m not doing anything in January - I’m just sitting with my arms folded across my chest and I’m not going to create. THAT’S ALL! But, we’ll see what happens.”

And Manilow ended with a laugh which this correspondent took to mean that the man who has written hundreds of best-selling songs, won a Grammy, a Tony and an Emmy and is now breaking into Broadway has a much more difficult time not creating than creating.

But being busy doesn’t seem to upset him any more than he is bothered by having a couple of hundred songs ready to sing at the spin of a wheel. And maybe it’s a pseudo-vacation not having to plan the show. He wrote the songs, but he lets you pick them.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Barry Manilow will perform at the Spokane Arena on Friday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $29.75 and $39.75, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.